Skin Deep

by Lily Luchesi

  “Well, gentlemen? Have we reached an agreement?” she asked, closing the door behind her.

  Daniel stood up and held a hand out to her. “I’m happy to join your team, Angelica.”

  She smiled, relieved. “Excellent. Has Danny briefed you?”

  Danny smiled back at her. “Waiting for you, boss.”

  She took a seat, feeling a bit more under control. “All right, Daniel, first things first: here’s your contract. Sign and date.”

  He took the contract and began to read. After he flipped a page and looked up and said, “When this is over, do I have the option to renew?”

  Angelica nodded, noticing the horrified look on Danny’s face. He obviously didn’t want the kid to become a professional PID agent. “You’ve been studying psychology. Ready to graduate med school and join a practice. So why would you want to renew a contract here? And if you say because of the pay, you’re mental.”

  Daniel chuckled. “No. I’m just leaving the option open because I might like this whole hunting gig.”

  “The first thing you need to do is not have such a callous attitude toward this. It’s not a ‘gig’, it’s a serious job,” Danny said.

  “Getting paternal again, Pops?” Daniel muttered, going back to reading the contract. “Okay, before I sign, what’s the training I’m supposed to go through?”

  “Two types for you. You need to be well versed in combat, as well as improve your mental abilities. We have people to train you for both, but I’d rather Danny and I give you the combat training personally in between hunting. One of the Coven members will help with your precognitive powers,” Angelica explained.

  Daniel nodded. “All right.” He signed his name and pushed the contract back toward Angelica, who felt a terrible sense of foreboding as she picked it up. She might not be or have ever been a precog, but she had a kick ass intuition. Suddenly, she wanted to burn the contract and kick him out, but that was silly. Chalking it up to her overburdened emotions about Danny’s family ties, she simply signed the contract and stamped it with the official PID seal.

  “Welcome to the team, Castorini.” She shook his hand again. “I’ll be calling you that often: too much confusion with your names.” She filed his contract away and set about looking for the proper files in her desk. She was many things, but organized was not one of them. However, in the controlled chaos of her desk and files, she knew where everything was. “I’d like to have Sean give you a tour of the facilities once this briefing is over,” she added, finding the new file she needed.

  “Sure. He seemed pretty cool. Wasn’t he some rock star back when Pops was my age?”

  Angelica nodded. “He had a metal band, Lycancore.” She rolled up her sleeve. “I still have their mascot tattooed... Anyway, here. This is what we’re dealing with.”

  She opened the file and knew she had a specific photograph on top. With new agents, she found that it was best to show them the gruesome stuff first, to be certain they had what it took to be a part of the team, even temporarily.

  “Okay, what am I...holy — what the fuck?” Daniel cried, dropping the file back on the desk as if it had burned him.

  The photo Angelica had given him was of the first murder the skin changer committed. It showed the PID agent laying in a pool of his own blood; Christmas decorations were behind him and a pile of mushy, bloody flesh was in front of him. His bulging, sightless eyes were staring at the heavens, unconcerned about the blood, the flesh, or the tacky reindeer around him. Angelica supposed that a fist-sized hole in your abdomen going through and through could make a guy be a little blasé about bad decorations. You could just see the middle part of a snowman through it.

  “That is Eric Rodriguez. He was one of our desk agents and strategists. He was the first victim of a skin changer who has since gone on to kill four more of our employees. We don’t know who the SC is, or why they’re targeting us, especially since I have only killed one skin changer in my life...and only three in total have ever been successfully captured in recorded paranormal history.”

  Daniel hesitantly looked back at the photo. “I see the dead guy. Two questions: what exactly killed him, and what is that lump?”

  “Skin changers can change their appearance and even their gender by touching a person just once. They are freakishly strong, they almost rival vampires. And this one decided to disembowel our agent with its bare hands,” Angelica replied. “The ick on the floor is the residue a skin changer leaves behind when they switch to another appearance.”

  Daniel put the file down again. “Lovely. If they can change what they look like, how do you find them?”

  “That’s where you come in,” Danny said. “Like I told you, they have heightened brain activity, the kind a precog can immediately detect. Apparently it would be ten times stronger than a transmission from a human would be.”

  Daniel appeared to think. “That would probably be like standing in front of the speakers at a concert and having feedback blast through.”

  Angelica was privately inclined to agree. In fact, if the kid didn’t take to the training from the Coven, he might very well lose his mind from such a strong psychic transmission. She decided to keep that tidbit to herself, hoping that she was wrong. But she rarely was.

  Daniel turned the photo over, skipping the report since Angelica had already given it to him. She watched as he looked at every murder scene, all four of which were vicious, but not as bad as the first one. Decapitation, broken neck, crushed skull, and liver ripped out, respectively.

  “This thing is psycho,” he commented, slapping the file shut. “I can’t wait to help bring it down.”

  “Now you’re speaking my language,” Angelica said. “Okay, so the rest of the rundown: the PID is open twenty-four-seven. Holidays, too. You’re welcome to use our training facilities whenever, and there’s never any shortage of a sparring partner of any species. Your paychecks will be deposited every Friday at midnight. Sean will activate your keycard with a special PIN to enter and exit the building. Our library is free for perusal. Take or ruin any of the books and I kill you. You’ll know when we need you. Any questions?”

  Daniel looked a bit overwhelmed as he seemed to file the info away, and he finally shook his head. “No, not a thing. Just tell me when my psychic training begins.”

  “Sean will schedule it with a witch or wizard. For now, you can go to his office and he’ll give you the tour.”

  Daniel stood up and shook Angelica’s hand, and then his great-grandfather’s. Angelica couldn’t help but notice the note of pride in Danny’s eyes. Despite his earlier reluctance, he seemed happy now to have his family a part of the PID.

  Daniel exited, and Angelica felt suddenly exhausted. Dawn was hours away, yet she felt like she needed a nap with a warm blanket. She supposed it was worry, a silly little human emotion she wished she could shirk.

  Danny leaned against her desk and said, “Is today over yet?”

  She chuckled. “Don’t I wish. We still need to meet with our informants.” She stood up and fired off a text to Hermes, confirming their meeting.

  “Angie, should we disclose our informants now?” Danny asked. “I feel like I’m keeping a secret from you or something.”

  It was a good question. She’d wanted to keep each other in the dark in case either was ever captured and tortured, but it had been three meetings respectively, so they couldn’t be in too much danger. If the SC was going to get at them via its city-wide spies, it would have done so by then.

  “Yeah.” Angelica showed Danny a photo of the Greek god. “Hermes. A minor god who fell out of the good graces of the other gods and lives as a mortal, except he’s still got his powers, which makes him a valuable asset. No one knows the city better than him...except me.”

  Danny choked out a surprised laugh. “You’re kidding? Only you would have a minor Greek god as your spy, Angie. And wasn’t he famous some century or so ago? I remember watching him with you!”

  She nodded. “Yeah, he
was. That’s what got him to be expelled from the Underworld. He interfered too much in a human capacity.”

  Danny shook his head. “The paranormal world never ceases to amaze me.”

  Angelica watched as Danny took out his phone and showed her a photo of a pretty, slightly plump woman of about thirty with bob-length curly brown hair, olive skin, and big hazel eyes.

  “Frieda Lorenzo. Witch and daughter of a former CIA spook. Witnessed two of the murders by sheer misfortune and tried looking into them herself.”

  Angelica nodded. “Perfect. You pick ’em well, Danny... Though I can’t recall ever seeing her with the Grand Coven. Must be under the radar.” As a rule, Angelica didn’t trust anyone under any radar, but Hermes had been as well, until Angelica had needed to help him once when his ex-lover tried to murder him. Since Hermes got expelled from the Underworld, Angelica made sure that he never fell below PID tracking ever again.

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, “Meet back here with reports by three.”

  He grabbed her hand as she walked away. “I love you, Angie.”

  Her heart might have melted just a bit whenever he said those words unprompted. “I love you, too.”

  She left the room then, going to her meeting place with Hermes, a playground called Grandparents Park on Chester Avenue. The place had been fixed up many times over the past century or so, but Angelica remembered when it had been a feeding ground for rogue vampires in the earliest of the twenty-first century. The park had been a disgrace, but a splinter from ill maintained equipment was the least lethal thing kids could get. Broken wood was nothing compared to a vampire bite.

  Hermes was waiting for her, twirling lazily around on the tire swing, gazing up at the stars. Angelica smirked at his jeans that were molded to his skin, pristine white Nikes, and baggy top. She never understood why the god dressed like a nineteen-nineties pop star, but that wasn’t any of her business.

  “Stargazing?” Angelica asked when she approached.

  “Yeah. Being on Earth and looking up through almost human eyes makes them look even more beautiful,” Hermes said, stopping his lazy swing and looking at Angelica, who sat on the regular swing next to him. “So, I think I have something for you...with a twist.” He winked.

  “And here I thought that I had a flair for the dramatics,” Angelica commented as she turned the swing to face him. “Well? The suspense is killing me.”

  “I was doing a canvass of each neighborhood of the victims, to see if she found them via location and not employment and then started a pattern, you know? And when checking security footage I —”

  Angelica held up a hand. “Security footage where?”

  Hermes blushed a bit. “I might have glamoured a city worker to show me streetlight camera footage.”

  “Oh, Hermy,” Angelica sighed. “Go on.”

  “Okay, so at three of the four usual hangouts of the deceased I found something: the same woman was at all of them. Skin changers change their appearance, but I’d recognize this lady. She stuck out, you know? Tall, hair so blonde it could be made of starlight, jeans that make your leather pants look tame.”

  “Are we talking about a suspect or someone you found on a dating app?”

  “I’m just saying she was striking. Besides, you know I don’t like blondes. Anyway, I saw her from behind at each crime scene. But where she entered, she never left. Another woman did, in all three places. And I remember this woman because, when I used your facial recognition software, it gave me someone who has been dead since the early twenty-first century.”

  Okay, that is a twist, Angelica thought.

  “The dead woman was named Josephine Pascuali, and she lived in Chicago from birth till death. Here’s where it gets even weirder.” Hermes took out his cell and showed Angelica the app that held all of his files. They were all empty. “The day after I discovered who Josephine was, my phone crashed and everything in it was wiped clean. No way to recover any of it.”

  “You think the skin changer knew somehow and hacked your phone?” Angelica asked.

  Hermes shrugged. “It’s the only possibility. But I’m betting the blonde woman is her real face, and Josephine is who she disguises herself as... Question: how does someone turn themselves into a person long dead?”

  “Dig up their corpse and bite off a piece of their skin,” Angelica said, feeling sick at the thought. There would be just enough skin on a corpse that old to bite if the weather had been warm and wet enough, and in Chicago you got both kinds of weather.

  Hermes looked a little green. “I really didn’t need to know that. Anyway, I’ll be on the lookout for both visages and will keep you updated.”

  “Can you go to the headquarters and give descriptions of the face you did see to a sketch artist?” Angelica asked. “I’d like to know who I’m looking for.”

  Hermes nodded and checked the stars. “We only have a few hours till sunrise. Can I come tomorrow as soon as you wake and I know you’ll be there?”

  “Certainly. And if you don’t I’ll come find you,” Angelica replied, standing up.

  “I’ve spent two centuries trying to avoid being killed by you. Don’t worry, I’ll be there!”

  * * *

  Danny was going to meet Frieda in their agreed-upon location, and he got a bit of nostalgia stinging his heart once again as he headed over to Navy Pier. They were going to talk in a car inside of the ferris wheel, the same place he had proposed to his human wife. It made sense: no one could overhear them in there. But it still hurt nonetheless.

  He had loved his human wife, stayed by her bedside as she died when they were both in their nineties. She was no Angelica, Danny would never love anyone like he loved Angie, but it had been a special relationship and losing her had hurt.

  It didn’t help that Frieda looked so much like her. Danny was now used to seeing people he thought were dead (Angelica and his other ex, Miranda Valdez) show up again, but because she didn’t look just like his ex, it was a little stranger, and creepier. And now adding Daniel into the mix, Danny was nearly dizzy with emotion.

  He’d left them all behind. Some he had watched die, others he had voluntarily given up. Either way, he didn’t like getting his past thrown back in his face like this. It had already happened once when he had discovered he was Jonathan Price reincarnated. God certainly had a warped sense of humor.

  Frieda was waiting at the base of the Pier’s ferris wheel, not looking at all perturbed that they were inside a closed pier. The place was nice, fun, bustling with people in the daytime and for a few hours after sunset. At three in the morning, however, it wasn’t so pleasant. Danny had read too many books and seen too many films about killer clowns, creepy carnivals, and broken-down amusement parks to ever make him feel comfortable there.

  You’re a vampire, he said to himself, feeling silly. You can handle any killer clowns or ghosts or anything else...and you have in the past.

  “Danny!” Frieda called happily, giving him a small wave. She was bundled in a white sweater that looked a little worse for wear and a thick gray scarf.

  He looked down at his own light jacket and smiled, slowly remembering how it had felt to need warmth against the elements. Now it took below zero temperatures to make him need more than this coat or a light scarf.

  “Hey, how are you?” he asked as he approached her.

  “Freezing,” she said with a giggle. “And I think I have something good for you.”

  “Excellent.” Danny reached into his pocket and got out the keys to the ferris wheel to get it started up. It was amazing all the things Angelica had access to here in the city; it was a little overwhelming. He had power as the Emperor, but Angelica had had power long before she had ever become the Empress. This was her city, no doubt about it.

  He got the ride running and held open a car door for his companion. “Ladies first.”

  She climbed in and Danny went after her, sitting across from her as their car ascended into the air. In a few minutes they
were treated to a lovely view of Lake Michigan, lit up by a million stars and quarter moon on one side, and the twinkling reflection of the lights from Chicago’s skyline on the other.

  “I’ve lived here all my life and have traveled the world, and this is still one of the most breathtaking sights I’ve ever seen,” Danny said appreciatively.

  “It’s certainly something,” Frieda agreed. “My husband proposed to me here, on the ferris wheel.”

  Danny looked over at her, surprised. “Funny. I proposed to my human wife here, too.”

  “Huh. What a cute coincidence,” Frieda said with a smile.

  Danny got a flash of something Angelica had once said to him, “A vampire believing in coincidences is as stupid as an adult human believing in Santa Claus.” He pushed it away, assuming that many happy couples got engaged here. It was a landmark and for the dwellers of this city; a romantic and nostalgic place.

  “What’s he like?” Danny asked, noticing that Frieda wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Oh. He passed away. Cancer. By the time he found out, there was nothing that could be done,” she said, eyes downcast.

  Danny nodded and said, “I’m sorry.” What he didn’t tell her was that, in his previous incarnation, he had died of stomach cancer. It was the early twentieth century, and there was no known treatment for the disease. “So, you said you had something good for me?” He needed to change the subject, because it was getting too emotionally heavy in that little car.

  Frieda visibly perked up. “Yes. Okay, so I cast a spell on cameras to check for people in the same place as you know the skin changer has been seen, and I think I found an accomplice, if not the skin changer in disguise.” She dug in her pockets, rummaging for her phone. She pulled it out and showed Danny a photo of a good-looking, olive-skinned man with close-cropped, curly black hair.

  Hermes, the Greek god. Angelica’s informant.

  “He’s been everywhere there was a murder. I think he was looking for evidence he could hide,” Frieda explained. “Why else would he be at all four locations?”

  Yes, why indeed? Danny wondered, looking at the picture. Unless Angelica sent him there? “Do you have anything else on him?”